I studied the two mist-shrouded peaks in front of me, admiring the way the mountains gave way to the yellowy green of the valley. As an afternoon storm drifted away, the dense gray clouds gradually revealed pockets of blue sky. Behind a table topped with two easels, paintbrushes, water-filled mason jars, and professional acrylics, my friend and I partitioned our canvases into sections with easy brushstrokes, separating the sky, the mountains, and the valley, as advised by our instructor, local artist Miranda Hill. She also runs the wellness and adventure activities center at Blackberry Mountain, a resort in the lush mountains of Walland, Tennessee.
I started to panic. The scene we were painting kept changing; my piece would not reflect a cohesive moment in time but rather a patchwork of diverse lighting and shading. I voiced my concern—that my work would not achieve technical excellence. But Hill reassured us we could paint in the details later, and I remembered where I was: on vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains. Nobody expected my art to meet professional standards. I took a deep breath and began mixing colors for my wildflowers.
To Hill, art is the ultimate wellness activity, especially in nature. Over the course of her two-hour outdoor painting class, she observes guests ease into an almost meditative state. “There's usually this shift where they let go of perfection and allow themselves to play a little more, which is really beautiful to watch,” she says. “Many leave feeling lighter, more connected to themselves, and surprised by what they were able to create when they gave themselves permission to just be present.”
As luxury resorts around the country upgrade and revamp their wellness programming to court today's health-minded guests, art—from mindful drawing to basket weaving classes—is increasingly on the menu. Of course art therapy did not originate as a luxury amenity for vacationers. A form of psychotherapy that engages the creative process through drawing, painting, dance, and artistic expression, art therapy has been shown to help with emotional regulation and anxiety reduction. In fact, mental health practitioners have utilized the practice since the 1940s, with recent research showing wide-ranging benefits, like enhancing quality of life for adult cancer patients, reducing depression in people with Parkinson's, and helping children with asthma feel less anxious. If the dozens of coloring books, packs of markers, and glittery stickers I accumulated over a year of personal illness are any indication, art can soothe us during our darkest moments.
As a practice, art therapy translates so well to the non-medical setting of a resort because its benefits—namely, calming way down—can be felt immediately. It doesn't hurt that many resorts are surrounded by natural beauty, which is itself therapy. Alila Ventana Big Sur, surrounded by giant redwoods and overlooking the Pacific, offers wellness-oriented art programming such as Perfectly Imperfect, a kintsugi workshop in which participants repair broken pottery. The centuries-old Japanese practice is, of course, a metaphor for resilience. At all three of its locations, Miraval Resorts & Spas has a kintsugi class called The Beauty of Imperfection; options at other Miraval locations include Zen Art (staying present during mandala drawing) and Paint the Music (exactly what it sounds like).
Travelers can choose how out-there they're willing to get. In Sedona, Arizona, Enchantment recently opened its 2,000-square-foot Artist Cottage as a space for healing; it provides programming rooted in the principles of art therapy but with a spiritual edge. Think workshops where you paint the animal you identify with and tree of life pendant crafting. Wherever you find yourself, the point of art therapy is letting go: of perfectionism, stress, self-consciousness, everything. When Hill teaches basket weaving at Blackberry Mountain, she imagines threading her “worries and stresses into the piece and leaving them contained there, which creates a sense of release and peace.”
At the end of the painting class, I studied my completed canvas, then looked up at the landscape, animated by birdsong and dappled light. I had failed to capture the scene's magic. But damn, I felt happy.
This article appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
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